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The theme of this book – and the main thing you should take from it – is that leaders are made, not born. Leadership skills can be learned, they are not instinctive, and they do not depend on any aspect or stage of your life. The young and the not so young can aspire to leadership, provided they can cultivate the necessary qualities,
Some of these attributes will be present in various forms, as a result of your upbringing, training and general personality traits. Leaders need to be confident and self-confident, but neither arrogant or self-effacing. Leaders should also be well versed in communication skills, and that means not just delivering your message, but making sure it is understood, and picking up on non-verbal signals from your team or your audience which may indicate a change of tactic or direction is called for.
Today’s corporate environment places great value on coaching skills, and if you are to be an effective and successful leader, you need to add coaching to your skills set. Coaching is a step up from training – it’s tailored to the individual, and aimed at realizing their full potential so they are able to resolve any performance, attitude or relationship issues and deliver the results you expect while growing in skills and personality.
Most of all, modern leaders are motivators and exemplars for their teams. They are not remote figures who command – and expect to receive – respect and adoration from their employees without doing anything to deserve it. The modern leader is right in there with his team, working for results, giving credit where it’s due, and taking ultimate responsibility when things don’t go to plan. He’s accountable to his team and to his superiors, and he earns, rather than expects, their loyalty.
If all this sounds a tall order, and you are already ruling yourself out as a leader, take some time to read through this book again, and see how accessible those leadership skills are to anybody who wants to make a difference in the workplace and in the world. There is no magic formula to make a leader, and there is no set syllabus that qualifies you for leadership. If you can develop the right skills, and if you can motivate and inspire your team to produce the results you are looking for, then you are a leader, make no mistake about that!
